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University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment

 School of Geography and the Environment

IGS: Current and Recent Graduate Research

Rachel James

Implications of global mean temperature increase for African precipitation

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Academic Profile

Rachel graduated from the University of Oxford with a first class BA in Geography in 2010. As an undergraduate she acquired a fascination with climate dynamics and conducted a short research project into the vertical distribution of temperature in the Saharan troposphere, comparing output from coupled climate models with radiosonde data. Her undergraduate dissertation focused on changes in African mean precipitation associated with global temperature increase, forming the basis for her current research.

Rachel also has an interest in climate change policy and environmental sustainability. In 2010 she was selected to take part in the IARU Sustainability Fellowship Programme, for which she worked on social marketing and carbon auditing at the University of California, Berkeley.

Awards
  • 2010 - The Bruce, Julia, and Mortimer May Senior Scholarship in Geography
  • 2008-2010 - Brasenose College Undergraduate Scholarship

Current Research

Despite the high profile of climate change in academia, politics, and the popular press, global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, and there remains a lack of adequate mitigation policy. The key motivation for this research is the possibility that the political stagnation is to some extent the result of a conflict between the approaches of scientists and politicians. World leaders are making decisions about whether to limit global warming to 2°C or 1°C, at a time when scientists are unable to tell with any certainty what this level of change might entail. The majority of climate change research has presented increasing GHG projections in a time-dependent manner, with the ability to compare anomalies at 2030 with those at 2050 and 2080, but not to compare 1°C changes with 2°C. It is important, therefore, that the implications of specific temperature stabilization targets are examined.

Rachel's research aims to achieve this for African precipitation, identifying changes associated with 1°C, 2°C, and higher levels of warming. She will investigate changes in mean precipitation as well as extreme precipitation events, and explore how these link into anomalies in the wider circulation system over the continent. The research will be carried out using data from coupled global climate models, regional climate models, and perturbed physics ensembles.